Those who have read Charles Dickens' famous story, Oliver Twist, will recall that little Oliver, still hungry after receiving the thin gruel doled out to him in the orphanage, was always saying, "More, please." Whether we are entitled to more or not, we human beings are very much like Oliver. We are always saying, one way or another, "We want more." Who was it that first said, "Enough is always a little more than a man has"? Philosophers and sages of long ago were sure that happiness does not lie in acquiring many "things" but in taming our desires. An ancient Greek thinker named Epicurus said of a friend, "If you want to make Pythocles happy, do not add to his possessions, rather, take away from his desires." 

Surely the happy ones are those who sing along with the shepherd boy in John B…